Critique of Software Violence

Taking Benjamin’s 1921 essay “A Critique of Violence” as starting point, the essay/paper analyses the notion of violence as an idea inherent to language and software, and questions its uses and ethical consequences. A version was published in Spanish “Crítica de la violencia software”, in Concreta 05, June 2015 (http://editorialconcreta.org/-CONCRETA-05-102-) and an updated version in English as keynote address for Executions: conversations on code, power & death, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, December 2015 (http://softwarestudies.projects.cavi.au.dk/index.php/*.exe_(ver0.1)).